Would you Like a Crypto Gift Card for Your Birthday? Coinbase Has Got the Answer

What do you do if you specialize in currencies that aren’t widely accepted? Piggy-back off a service that is. Or at least that’s what Coinbase have done this week, with the announcement of a new partnership that will see them offer gift card services across Europe which can bought with cryptocurrency. By partnering with London-based WeGift, the crypto gift cards will be usable anywhere that accepts WeGift, regardless of how the contents of the card came about. Major companies like Nike, Tesco, Carrefour, Google Play and many more – well over 100 in fact – currently accept WeGift, so now crypto can be channelled into gift cards for use in that very same company list.

Currently, the card will only be available in the UK, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and, from outside Europe, Australia – but expansion is pretty much inevitable if there is uptake. eGifter was another company that went into partnership with Coinbase for gift cards in the US back in 2013, although it removed the necessity for a Coinbase account to use this service last year, proving that there is some sustainability in the idea.

The gift cards will be able to be bought using bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and Ethereum to begin with, with more currencies due to be added as the service kicks off.